Monday Afternoon Linkdown

Yesterday was International Penguin Day. Here are some fun facts on the fat, feathered fackers that you might not have been aware of.

On to our regularly scheduled linkification:

Happy 93rd birthday to the oldest living former Yankee, Virgil Trucks.

The numbers say that Andy Pettitte is off to the best start of his career.

On the day when the Yankees are scheduled for a visit to the White House, Lisa Swan at Subway Squawkers asks why the 1996 Yankees never made that trip.

Ryan Howard just got PAID to the tune of 5 years, $125M. The deal also contains a $23M option for 2017 with a $10M(!!) buyout. It's questionable whether Howard will be worth what he's making this year, let alone five or six years from now. But don't worry, Jon Heyman thinks it's a good deal. That sound you are hearing? Albert Puljos' stock entering the mesosphere.

Javier Vazquez ≠ Chien-Ming Wang. And making that comparison shows that you have an astonishingly short memory or a stunning lack of perspective. After three games in 2009, Chien-Ming Wang had given up 23 runs in 6 innings and had an ERA of 34.50. Opponents were hitting .622/.667/.1026 off of him. By contrast, through four starts, Vazquez has given up 20 runs in 20 innings and an opponents line of .309/.398/.580. Granted, that's pretty terrible, but it's not in the same multiverse of suckitude as Wang was last year.

EJ from TYU took a look at Yanks prospect Graham Stoneburner and attempted to establish some standard criteria by which we can evaluate minor league pitchers.

Christian Garcia underwent Tommy John Surgery and will be attempting to recover from it for the second time. As Matt said when the news of Garcia's injury first broke, the could be the final blow to his career, but if all goes well he should be back on the mound next May.

The Hardball Times started up a new Twitter feed for the sole purpose of linking to interesting baseball writing all over the web. I'm guessing it will be pretty similar to kind of stuff you can find in these link dumps.

Joe Posnanski wrote a characteristically thorough and interesting take on why it's easy for people to hate A-Rod.

Richard Sandomir writes explores the history of the theme songs of the Mets and the Yankees, Meet the Mets and Empire State of Mind. Oh, I'm sorry, is that not the Yankees official song?

This has been linked far and wide, but for posterity's sake, here is Flip Flop Fly Ball's graphical interpretation on A-Rod's spat with Dallas Braden.

A few current and former players have weighed the War of Rodriguez & Braden. Tim Hudson and Chipper Jones called it "silly" and "childish" while David Wells went in the opposite direction, calling A-Rod full of shit. Bronson Arroyo (of all people) said he "wouldn't think twice" about A-Rod running over the mound and Morgan Ensberg called Braden's tantrum a "full blown loss of mind". (h/t to Lisa for some of the links)

Speaking of Mr. Ensberg, he and Tom Tango had an interesting conversation about players' arbitration clocks and some of the differences between the way the NHL and MLB handle contract buyouts and service time (among other topics).

The Wall Street Journal used some of Larry's data and ganked his idea without linking back to him, but they did make the sweet graphic above, averaging the Yankees' home run trot times.

Greg Fertel explains why pinch hitting for Nick Johnson is not a good idea.

They're a bit outdated by now, but Kevin Dame at THT created some visuals illustrating the performance of the rotations of the AL East teams.

Consternation from Red Sox Nation. Is there a more enjoyable combination?

Harvey Araton wrote a piece for the NYT about the "elegance" of Marino Rivera that has no business being in the sports section because it focuses mostly on his role as a male model for Canali.

If you spent a good amount of the weekend listening to Gang Starr, you might want to check out the piece that Guru's brother - who happens to be a drama professor at Stanford - wrote about him for the Boston Globe. D.J. Premier also made a mix in memory of the man.

In addition to penning his L.A. Times obit and a piece that aired on NPR embedded below (click through if you are reading via RSS), Oliver Wang from Soul Sides put together an appreciation of Guru's work on his blog. Even if you aren't a fan, checking out any of these pieces should give you a healthy respect for the man's work.

That's it for us today. Catch you folks in the morning.

Hail To The Chief, Hail To The Victors

Good morning my fellow Fackers.

It's big day for our team, as they'll spend their off day in our nation's capital. While the big story of the trip will be the feting of the team at the White House's South Portico, or more likely the East Room should the weather forecast prove true, that will be just a small portion of the Yankees' doings during their time in the greater D.C. area this week.

The Yankees' day will begin long before their 3 PM appointment at the White House. Earlier in the day, a host of players, coaches, and front office personnel will bring the World Series trophy on a tour of Walter Reed Medical Center and the Malone House, visiting wounded veterans.

On Tuesday, club officials will bring the trophy on a tour of Washington, including a visit with the Bronx's own Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

At Camden Yards Tuesday evening, the Yankees will host twenty wounded veterans from Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital. The following day, select players will bring the trophy to Bethesda Naval Hospital for a visit. The trophy's tour of D.C. will conclude with a Wednesday lunch at the Pentagon.

Full details are available in the Yankees' official press release.

Thank you. And God bless the Yankee Universe.

Off Night Links

[Again via 30fps]

Yet another baseball-less night. Here are a few things to help pass the time.

Navin Vaswani, better know on Twitter, in the blogoverse and on occasion in our comment section as "eyebleaf" is doing a project for the Toronto Globe and Mail during which he'll travel by bus and visit all 30 Major League ballparks in 60 days. He's a Jays fan and filed his report of yesterday's Yankees and Rangers game from the refreshing perspective of an outsider. Tonight, he's off to see the Mets play the Cubs at Citi Field before he continues his journey. If, like me, you are extremely jealous of the awesome trip Navin is embarking on, you can keep up with his dispatches here.

+100 to Matthew Pouliot of Hardball Talk for this headline.

The Yankees are heading to the White House next Monday.

Will Leitch has an excellent feature in New York Magazine about advanced defensive metrics awesomely-titled "Databases Loaded".

Both Joe Posnanksi and Larry from IIATMS took a look at the Forbes Business of Baseball Rankings. It's really staggering how much more money the Yankees make than everyone, particularly at the gates.

Sam Dolnick of the New York Times wrote a piece about the street named after Thurman Munson. There's a great quote from Munson's widow, Diana, in it:

“He wasn’t about the big superhighway and mainstream streets,” she said. “It fits his personality so much more that it would be an out-of-the-way street and be something that not a lot of people would embrace.”

In conjunction with his new gig at RotoGraphs, Mike from River Ave. Blues made an appearance on FanGraphs Audio this weekend to talk about fantasy baseballing.

Last week, a message informing people of a Metro North train with service to Yankee Stadium was accidentally replaced with a warning of a bomb threat at several stations. Oops.

The Wire + Baseball = Win.

More Soxenfreude, this time from Charles P. Pierce who thinks that it's not too early to panic over the Red Sox. As much as I'd like to agree with him, it is. We're only through 7.5% of the season and although they've stumbled out of the gate, they're going to find their way soon enough.

Morgan Ensberg wrote a post at his blog this weekend about the real reason the pace of play in the MLB is so much slower than it used to be: Bud Selig. Not really, it's the commercial breaks and FOX, ESPN and TBS get an extra 30 seconds every time. But the players are only allotted 8 seconds of at bat music because that's the real menace.

Dave Cameron, who just joined FanGraphs full time, talks about the Mariners' baserunning so far this year and attempts to draw the line between aggressive and reckless.

Ubaldo Jiminez threw a no hitter this weekend, which is cool and everything, but he had six walks and needed the 10th most pitches of the Retrosheet era to do it. It's still an impressive feat without a doubt, but wouldn't, say, a two hit, two walk complete game shutout technically be better?

An interesting note from that game: Matt pointed out that Jiminez started throwing exclusively from the stretch after the 6th inning and didn't give up a walk after that.

Sagiv from Fire Jerry Manuel took Jon Heyman to task for saying that Andy Pettitte is going to the Hall of Fame for pretty much the same reasons he said he wouldn't vote for Bert Blyleven.

Speaking of firing Jerry Manuel, Matthew Carruth at FanGraphs took him to task for allowing not only holding back Francisco Rodriguez from pitching until the 19th inning on Saturday, but letting him warm up in every single inning before that, throwing over 100 pitches. Warm up pitches aren't imaginary, Jerry, they tax pitchers' arms too.

Do the Mets need Jesus in their lives? Mike Francesa doesn't see why he would choose them over any other team in the division.

There are parallel characters in The Sandlot and Reservior Dogs? You bet.

That's all for tonight. Catch you in the AM.